The invention relates to a method for providing services in a computerized system that includes a storage system for data pertaining to the services. The classical method of rendering such services is by one-time broadcast which is scheduled on each separate broadcast channel. Each repetition of a particular program item must again be scheduled separately. Recently, two new trends in service rendering have come up. The first relies on the providing of multiple channels in parallel, so that the number of service items may increase by orders of magnitude; also, the channels need no longer be one-to-many. A still more important trend is interactivity, so that the physical usage of the channel(s) is at least codetermined by actual requests by the user at the remote station.
Both aspects complicate the scheduling of the availability of the service items that may come in a broad variety, such as movies, music, games, data transfer, chatter-boxes, home-shopping services and various others. Such scheduling must adhere to various restrictions, such as government regulations, time dependency of the presence and wishes of diverse user person categories, the minimum time necessary for the rendering of a particular service item, and many others. Also, the scheduling operation should be as simple as reasonably possible to avoid errors and to minimize the effort necessary for implementation thereof.